Emmerdale ITV1, 7pm

I am indebted to reader Thea Rae for commenting on my recent review of Law & Order: UK, which conferred Scots nationality on actor Patrick Malahide. "I admire him very much and would like him to be a Scot," says Thea, "but according to his Internet Movie Database entry, he was born in Berkshire of Irish immigrant parents.

Has IMDb got it wrong?"

Alas, no. IMDb is correct. I have got it wrong. Born Patrick Gerald Duggan in the village of Pangbourne, Patrick Malahide is inescapably English.

In mitigation, I'd assumed Malahide was a Scot because he was so convincingly Caledonian in an early TV role, in 1978, in The Standard.

Set in the offices of a fictional Glasgow-based national newspaper, the series cast Malahide as Colin Anderson, frank and fearless news editor of the Scottish Daily Standard.

Malahide's gruff and dogged hack set a Scottish journalistic standard of truthseeking which may never have existed, or yet be surpassed, but he himself is an Anglo.

Not that this awkward fact will stop me proclaiming Patrick Malahide a Scot, let me tell you. For he sounds like a Scot (when required). He also has a boney munro-bagger's face and an air of rigorous concentration mixed with faint disgust, like a Calvinist minister contemplating the latest Pope-ish encomium. On top of that, Patrick Malahide is simply too good not to be one of us.

Conversely, I can hereby state that Emmerdale is so utterly frightful it's compelling.

Witness the outcome of the elderly soap's big set-piece courtroom drama, which had one of the feckless Dingle clan, Debbie Dingle, in the dock facing a murder rap. Instead of a dramatic climax, we some typical Emmerdale nonsense: everything fizzled out into risible mince, with fresh-faced uppercrust Jasmine Thomas bursting into the courtroom at the last minute to nix the trial by shouting her confession of guilt at the judge.

This later led to a ratty gang of jubilant Dingles gathering drunkenly in the Woolpack, all raising pints of foaming ale aloft while raggedly declaiming their version of the trade union movement's greatest picket-line protest chant: "The Dingles, united, will never be defeated!" Despite not being dead, Arthur Scargill was doubtless turning in his grave.

More enjoyable misappropriation was to follow as Emmerdale signed off with a burst of glum song ("Nowhere to hide/ No words to speak/ A silent scream/ Is all I hear") from a lame Swedish bunch of Radiohead copyists called the Motorhomes.

In between we'd witnessed poor dear old Freddie Jones - once of the Royal Shakespeare Company; he's a swishy old AC-tor! - failing to make sense of his role as a swishy old AC-tor! called upon to wear a long tweed coat and a floppy brown trilby with a feather affixed to it.

More successfully, one-time Hollywood sex-pot Amanda Donohoe smouldered while wearing too-tight jeans and an unbuttoned blouse.

Elsewhere, actors it's kindest not to identify by name conducted unlikely feats of cross-cultural fertilisation in vain.

Harassed shopkeeper Bob Hope was thus played as Alan Titchmarsh with Morrissey's Smiths-era quiff on his head. Gamekeeper Sam Dingle? A cross between Benny from Crossroads and helium-voiced Ashley out of Coronation Street. Eli Dingle: Bobby Gillespie with a Lancashire accent.

Eh oop, dingle-dreadful: that's Emmerdale.